Posts Tagged ‘video games’

Back in January, we received a small monetary bonus, so I decided, Hey, what the hell, I’m gonna try one of these new-fangled VR gaming headsets.

Being a wearer of spectacles, though, I had concerns. There was a chance they simply wouldn’t work for me, so I tried one at the mall, watched YouTube videos, read many reviews, browsed the forums, and carefully parsed return policies. Weighing pros and cons, I made a decision and bought one. It was on backorder, but I wasn’t in a hurry.

Regardless, I failed to meet last week’s self-imposed deadline because I did something that I said I was no longer going to do: I bought a first-day-release version of a video game.

I’ve been burned by the hype of Release Day versions, most notably No Man’s Sky and Fallout 76. For those two, I either stuck with the game through months of patches and updates (NMS), or I dropped it like a hot rock within a fortnight of fighting patches and incredibly bad design (F76). Those two reactions pretty much describe the trendline of my frustration with the beta versions that game studios now peddle as consumer-ready fare. I mean, you should not load up a brand new game on the day of its release only to have a 5GB patch begin downloading. That’s just nuts, but it’s indicative of the high-stakes meat-grinders that game studios have become.

However, when I heard that Borderlands, the irreverent dystopic sci-fi shoot-n-loot franchise, was coming out with a third major installment, (and in my book, there have been only two Borderlands games, as the “pre-sequel” and the spinoffs had neither the charm nor the playability of installments 1 and 2), I could not help myself and pre-ordered myself toward what I hoped and prayed would not be another Release Day filled with frustration and tears. (more…)

Like this:

Let’s take a break from news about my career change (because there’s no news to report) and turn to a quandary solved. I speak, of course, of the answer to the crucial question: “Xbox One or PS4?”

I’ve been asking myself this question for a while now, but with the cut in income that this career change will inevitably bring, the issue has reached the fish-or-cut-bait point. In the past, “Both” would have been a viable answer, but now that’s no longer an option. I must make a choice, and soon. So…this one? The other? Or neither? (Yes, neither is an option.)

Currently, I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3, acquired over the course of several years (I am not an early adopter), and I can’t say I favor one over the other. The differences are largely insignificant to my playing style, and those differences are far outnumbered by the similarities (both good and bad). As a result, I really don’t have a preference, leaving “Neither” as the strongest option.

As an Old Man Gamer, I don’t have large circles of online friends with whom I go RPGing or MMOing or FPSing. I occasionally run with a couple of guys on Xbox Live and a couple of other folks on the PSN circuit. That’s it. I’m more of a lone wolf, in that regard and thus, when pondering the question of console upgrades, knowing what my peeps are planning to do carries some, but not a lot of weight (especially since none of them are planning to upgrade anytime soon). So, again, “Neither” looks to be the best answer.

With this in mind, you might then ask me why, last week, I suddenly decided to purchase a PS4?

I am that rare thing, that forgotten demographic, that chimera of the gaming world.

I am a guy with an Xbox Gold Membership and an AARP card.

‘Struth. Even though my twitch-muscle response time took a nosedive during the Reagan administration, even though I often win the FIFO award during multiplayer gaming sessions, I still enjoy a little mayhem now and again.

The First-Person Shooter is my go-to genre in gaming, and as such, I’ve followed several of the big franchises over the years. This year saw long-awaited releases for three of them: Halo, Gears of War, and BioShock. I’ve played them all, now, and I am therefore qualified to say that there’s only franchise that did it right.

Now, since I am Old Man Gamer, my yardsticks are not the same as those freshly minted TwitchMaster 2000 players. While I appreciate the diverse weaponry and multiplayer modes and splatter-factors, I put greater weight on story line, set design, innovative gameplay, character realization, and what I call the Immersion Factor. I also care about how women are portrayed in video games, not because I’m a prude, but because I’m just sick and tired of females only existing in video games to up the titillation quotient.